Redisoveries

Creative: Serag Heiba, 12 November 2023

2023 Climate Futures Prize First Place

Illustration by Holly Brown

First: The Sea

It was still dark when Alia woke up. The electric hum which had coaxed her to sleep ceased. She shifted clumsily out of bed, instinct telling her to brace for the incessant rolling of the room, but that too had ceased. There was not even the sound of the sea.

Down the corridor, a soft orange glow emanated from the open door of a cabin. She flicked the light switch in her own room, then flicked it twice more, but the dark remained. She checked the time on her phone, wincing at the bright glare of the screen. There were no changes to the ship’s status. Estimated arrival: 21:00 August 19 to 13:00 August 20. The phone would buzz in sixteen minutes announcing dawn. Alia, now awake, would feel guilty returning to bed before completing the morning prayer. 

The bathroom was at the end of the corridor, past the cabin with the light. Alia’s footsteps were muffled by the carpeting. She threw a passing glance into the open doorway as she passed by it, feeling a vague shyness as she did although she saw nothing. Only a candle set upon the nightstand of an otherwise vacant room. The bed wasn’t made. Alia tried to keep her mind clear as she hunched over the sink to perform ablution. She turned the faucet both ways, but not a drop landed in her open palm. She put her ear to the lifeless tap, not entirely knowing why, and heard nothing. She looked behind her in embarrassment, making sure no one had been watching her.

There were sometimes buckets of water on the main deck. Alia took the short stairway up, trying as carefully as possible to not arouse sound out of the metal steps. The hatch was cool to the touch and opened after some fuss to a moonless sky. The air was still, windless. The ship was not moving.  The wingsails which normally powered the vessel stood unimpressed. They stretched upwards beyond sight, though Alia knew they were only as tall as the ship was long. When the wind was blowing, she would watch them with fascination as they carried the ship along, barely showing any sign of strain on their rigid, carbon fibre bodies. In the doldrums of the equator, they creaked and groaned with impatience while an electric motor ferried the ship along to windier seas. But now, neither sail nor motor made noise.

Somewhere on deck, a hushed voice interrupted the silence. Alia paused to listen. She moved slowly in its direction, increasingly aware that something was not as it should be. They were a week into their voyage. Alia’s destination was university.

“Hurry up!” A man’s voice was directed towards her in a sort of yelling whisper. She stopped in her place. “There’s no time!” The voice came from near the bow. Alia felt she’d gotten herself mixed up in something she’d rather stay out of. Before she could turn to walk away, the man turned on a flashlight with an exasperated grunt and shined the beam at her. “Oh, you’re not Jo. My apologies.” He pointed the flashlight down.

Alia said nothing.

“I’m Adam, the Captain. I’m guessing you can’t really see me. Your name is?”

She swallowed first, then: “Alia. I was just looking for some water, I didn’t mean to—”

“Oh right, Alia—yes sorry about that, we had to cut all the motors.” Alia didn’t expect the captain to know his passengers by name. Maybe he was just being courteous.

“Why?”

“Jo thinks there are whales nearby.” Alia could hear a smile forming on his face between the words. She was waiting for the rest of the answer when the sound of someone running towards them diverted both their attention.

“I got it!” A second man ran past Alia to the railing, tossing whatever was in his hands overboard. Moments later, a splash. 

“Let’s be quick, Jo, please. I can’t keep the motors off for longer,” Adam told the man. He then turned to Alia once more, “Alia, this is Jo.” Jo was fastening one end of rope to the metal rails.

“Were you already awake?” Jo asked, his back facing her.

Alia shook her head, before realizing neither of them would see it. “No,” she then said.

“Ah, well I’m sorry for waking you up.” The sentence had hardly left his mouth before he’d sprung up onto the railing, pulled at the rope on his waist twice as though checking it was secure, and leaped feet first into the water below.

Alia gasped audibly. She gathered herself instantly. The captain was looking at her, his smile still perceptible through the darkness. She replied with an expectant look.

“Yes, so, let me explain. Jo is trying to… eavesdrop, basically. He’s got the sense that whales are nearby, I couldn’t tell you how. The device he threw down there is from his laboratory. It can pick up all sorts of sounds underwater, but the vibrations from the ship’s motors would interfere with it. That’s why we shut everything off. I’m not supposed to allow it, of course, but I’m sure you can understand the significance of all this. You’re going to study marine science, right?”

So he does know her. “Yes, that’s right.” 

“Well Jo teaches it.”

“But why’d he jump in?” Alia couldn’t hide the alarm in her voice. Adam chuckled.

“I guess that’s more about impatience than science. Or maybe it’s hope. After all this time, if you learned that there was still a possibility wouldn’t you want to be in there too, listening for yourself?”

Alia peered over the railing, where the beam of light from the captain’s flashlight reflected off the glass-like water. She pictured the possibility of whales out there, and it stirred something within her. Minutes passed without any signs of movement. Alia felt her phone buzzing inside her pocket. Then, a tug on the rope.

“Okay he’s ready, time to pull him up.” 

“Can I help?” Alia asked.

Second: The City

The 111th floor. Here, the sun rises seconds earlier than at street level. You’re not bothered by the flood of light—you’re already awake and sitting by the window, collecting the morning in your outstretched palms as it oozes down the glass canopy like honey. You’ve never tasted honey.

You were born on the Island and briefly lived Kowloon-side but this building, Po Yi’s building, is your future. It’s the future—you tell everybody. When the bankers and moneymen moved out, you and a whole city like you moved in. Here, in the middle of the tallest city in the world, you’re a farmer. The 111th floor of Pedder Building, Pedder Street in Central is your plot.

You first saw Po Yi on the news. You were returning home from work. The daytime shift in the tunnel sheltered you from the boiling air up above, but you became a stranger to daylight and all that came with it: a good night’s sleep, a healthy appetite for food and life, a sense of time. You watched people watching things, deciding if buying this or that will make the day go by quicker. You watched the people on the moving walkway, and the screen suspended above it. Six meant home awaits. You hit the stalls first for some takeout, but never anything too smelly. Two-thirds of your salary dissipates renting a flat that has got fewer square meters in it than you’ve lived years, and bad smells linger long. Most things taste like nothing nowadays, and—wait. Po Yi’s on the screen. You look past her first then double take. Dark hair, broad shoulders. She’s in court. Then she’s gone.

You’ll see her again the following morning, from the toilet seat. Yesterday’s stall was a poor choice. It left your stomach groping at you all morning, but your employer discourages unessential bathroom use. Never mind that, you’ve got to go. Really got to go. In the subterranean sprawl, there are screens to keep you occupied even in the bathroom. The one watching you perched on the toilet demands attention. Po Yi’s landmark trial unfolds before you. You’ll learn all the details in time. There’s nothing unlawful about what she did. She used their old tricks against them and beat them at their own game. She owns the building now, and she’s kicked them all out. She’s creating something new. She’s a revolution, you think to yourself. That woman is a revolution. You’ll remember this moment later, in Po Yi’s building, the first night you spend there.

There’s hundreds asleep around you. Your too-small apartment sits in the back of your mind as the newness of your surrounding soaks in. You have trouble falling asleep. You’re not sure if this will all last. Po Yi’s back in court, they’re trying to bring her down again.

Morning brings new perspective. What has been set in motion here can’t be undone. Office space makes for good communal living once the furniture is repurposed. The colors are drab, lifeless, but the lighting is spectacular. “Why don’t we grow a garden?” somebody asks. The hundreds of you set to work. You’re not watching anymore, you’re doing. Work with purpose—it’s the first time in your life you’ve felt it. The garden’s not for growing vanity, it’s your food and medicine. Or it will be, one day. When that day arrives, you’re no longer hundreds, but thousands. It’s no longer a garden, but a forest.

It works like this: the lower floors house the core and the upper floors supply it. Your knack for all things green and brown finds you sleeping in the clouds most nights, your hammock strewn between two columns enveloped in vines. You prune and pot and sow and harvest. The tower’s a giant greenhouse, an oasis in the concrete. It lives and breathes.

But you also make mistakes. There’s a hole in the 60th floor where the teleconference room used to be. The weight of too much transformation needs better foresight. Plans are drawn up and votes are cast. There’ll be systems to recycle water and filter it, to compost everything, to generate your own power from the windows and walls, to move people up and down once the lifts stop working, to dig in if the world outside turns upside down. The entrance to the building is never closed. Everyone is welcome. Your tower is something of a spectacle now, but there are rumors around the city. More change is coming.

Third: The Coast

The first message reaches me underwater as I finish collecting the trap cameras. “We’ve made a discovery,” Anna tells me. I smile at the arrival of her words in my ear, comedically compressed and so far from her true voice. For all the technology they’ve got on board that station, there’s not much to make long distance easier when millions of kilometres separate us. If I could message her from here, I’d tell her that I’m also on the verge of discovery.

We’re regenerating our coast bay by bay, cape by cape. The stretch I protect was once a meadow. Seagrass carpeted the sandy floor as far the eye could see, interrupted only by bouquets of colourful coral. That was a long time ago. Even the most resistant life had vanished from these waters. But there’s a new hope for everything now. Slow beats fast, circularity beats growth.

In the years since Anna’s departure our home in the valley has changed little, but the coast has recovered much. Our house lies on the outer periphery of the ring that forms the village, nearest to the shoreline where the orange of the desert turns briefly green before colliding with blue. Anna’s work is somewhere up there among the planets and moons. Mine is down here.

I descend the wooden steps at the end of the pier into the sea every morning. As the sun climbs up from behind the jagged mountaintops and lays a warm blanket on the surface above me, I play a game of counting fish. One by one down the list, I place tallies and checkmarks. It’s been years in the making: the seagrass is growing back; the fish are returning. I set and collect trap cameras, and if the tide’s brought in any plastics I haul them out.

The reappearance of a new species in the meadow always warrants celebration, but every once in a while something big appears. Something that requires the reversal of a decades-old label — the crossing out of the word EXTINCT from the entries of encyclopedias. The rewriting of history itself. Anna’s second message comes through.

“I’m not supposed to tell you until it’s official, but we found something in the last sample.” 

Above water, the sound is less fuzzy. The receiver’s implanted in the nook behind my earlobe. I don’t bother with music or radio; I’ve got it set just for her. Whenever she speaks to me, I’m listening. There is, of course, a cosmic delay. There’s the message before she sleeps, and the message right when she wakes up. Then there are the updates throughout the day. I return messages when I can, but from our coast that’s not always possible.

Here’s what this morning has revealed. Patches of seagrass in the north-eastern quadrant were uprooted. Those sites had grown out of last year’s propagation. Normally this would be bad news: these specimens grow slowly and any loss can be a major setback. But there’s something to suggest otherwise. It’s not a setback at all.

“There might be actual life out here. It’s all over the soil.”

My mind is elsewhere. The walk back from the beach gives me time to think. At the house, the footage from the trap cameras confirms it all. The fluked tail, the whiskers, the spindle-shaped body. It’s been at least a hundred years. Not even my father has seen it, but the evidence is unmistakable. 

“Can you believe it?”

“There’s life out there,” she said. The weight of it hasn’t dawned on me yet. I stand by the window, watching the tide turn as I tap record. There’s life here too.

Fourth: The Jungle

They arrive ceremoniously, draped in a rosy hue. Hundreds of eyes are watching. There are cheers all around. Their journey has been long, but they join the celebration. A chorus of sound paints the night. A warm mist fills the air. The dancing won’t stop till the daybreak, and tomorrow it will begin anew.

Last: The Border

There’s a line in the sand where the border used to be. There’s nothing there anymore except a sign with two arrows: 

Welcome

Here lies Earth, and there lies Earth too.